


l_ve

by MiniInfinity



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Parents, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, idk how to tag this i am so sorry, junhui pops up for a second lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:58:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity
Summary: Wonwoo and Mingyu's lives fill in the word between the letters.





	1. lave

_lave: verb (used without object), laved, laving._

_Archaic. to bathe_

 

Sunlight presses down on the two as they walk down the sidewalk. A mid-afternoon chatter spills from the cracks of shop windows and restaurant doors. Clouds tug along smaller tufts of gray and a line of birds dart across the pale blue. Wonwoo wishes that the sunlight pressed down a little harder, that the clouds would give more way to the sun, so that Mingyu wouldn't turn to the mountains beyond the skyscrapers.

 

"Hey, we should go hiking," Mingyu suggests, pointing towards the mountains behind the clouds. "At least, while she's still at school."

 

There's a tug in Wonwoo's heart to say no because the heat beating down every centimeter of his skin sounds just like hot water torture, but the tug of Mingyu's hand back to their apartment to get ready tells him otherwise.

 

 

A sprained ankle and an eight-kilometer hike back down trails of dirt and rocks later, Wonwoo leans his bare back against Mingyu's chest, shifting along the bath bubbles so that he fits snug between Mingyu's legs. Mingyu massages the shampoo in Wonwoo's hair, humming a song that he caught from the radio that morning.

 

"I can't believe we hiked up that trail, only to have you drag me back down," Wonwoo mutters, scraping his nails against the palm of his hand to get rid of the dirt still remaining there from when he tripped. He tries to roll his ankle, hanging over the edge of the bathtub, but winces at the shot of pain up his leg.

 

"It's okay," Mingyu assures him, rinsing Wonwoo's hair with the shower head before his own. "I got some really good exercise, so now, I don't have to exercise for the rest of my life."

 

The wall stops Mingyu from leaning all the way back when Wonwoo reaches his hand and his fingertips run up Mingyu's face, soon stuck in Mingyu's nostril. He snorts water and soap out of his nose, "My nose stings, Wonwoo," after complains of the water shooting higher up in his head.

 

Mingyu rinses off the bubbles and conditioner in his hair when a rhythmic knocking at the door brings everything into a silence. He dries himself off with a towel before changing into boxers and a shirt, closing the bath curtains behind him. Wonwoo's foot sticks from the end of the curtains and he wiggles his toes at Mingyu.

 

Their daughter's pigtails reach Mingyu's elbows when she steps in the bathroom, scraping her nails into her arms and muttering how much it itches. "It _burns_ , Dad."

 

Mingyu lifts her up from under her arms and props her on the sink and her legs dangle from the granite tops. There's a slow melody from Wonwoo's lips as the scraping sounds of a body sponge runs across skin, and Mingyu starts spelling out the instructions of the hydrocortisone tube from the cabinet.

 

Mingyu holds onto his daughter's arms, thumbs dragging over blooming red. "You can't scratch it after I put it on, okay?" is soothing from his lips. His daughter nods and he takes her face in his hands, lifts his lips to her forehead.

 

There's a quiet meow from below him and his daughter and a yelp from the other side of the bathroom, when paws start reaching higher up on the curtains.


	2. leave

_leave: verb (used without object), left, leaving._

_to go away, depart, or set out_

 

These days, four in the morning is never a welcoming time for the two of them. None of the light kisses back home and languid arms from a long day of work. None of the curling back into bed right away in each other's solid embraces or the offerings of carrying Mingyu's backpack and lunchbox for him because he must be exhausted for stretching his time card.

 

Four in the morning rips open to a single light hanging above the kitchen sink and letting everything else absorb the darkness, lets the eye bags under Mingyu's eyes darken a shadow and Wonwoo's angry sighs stand between them. Breaks through to Wonwoo scratching his head down to bitten nail beds, leaves Mingyu with his veins coursing a stark trail against exhausted flesh. Sometimes, Wonwoo's fist manages to smash right onto the counter and Mingyu raises his voice a little too high for comfort, too loud for a good night's sleep. Wonwoo nearly steps back into the jars lined up behind him when Mingyu lifts a hand.

 

It's when Mingyu speaks a handful of words per second, harshness striking in every one of those syllables, that the apartment finally settles silence. The silence laid upon them only when their heart breaks, when they hear cries from somewhere in their apartment.

 

Wonwoo's voice doesn't waver at the single word of, "Leave," but it starts to slap his thoughts off. "I don't want our daughter to wake up to this again."

 

Mingyu closing the front door is the only quiet thing that has ever happened in the next moments after that. His daughter's cries are the only painful knives at his ears and Wonwoo's knees almost give in when he's about to turn the doorknob to his daughter's room. The crying doesn't stop when he opens the door, not when he slips into his daughter's short bed and lets her lie right across his chest. Doesn't even soften when he drags a soft palm over her small, trembling back.

 

"Does Dad really mean those things?" she stutters against the cloth of his shirt, clings onto the fabric, and Wonwoo drops his hand to cup hers. Uncurling her fingers out across his hand, it barely reaches past the edges of his palm, "that he has no time for us anymore because of work? Is that why I never see him anymore?"

 

It stops all at once, after her "I miss Dad," when Wonwoo hums a lullaby to her, when he still struggles to keep his breathing right and his tears from dripping onto her face.

 

 

He wakes up to a long scroll of missed calls and capitalized messages on his phone, a voicemail from Minghao asking what happened, _why is your husband here instead of with you?_

 

 

He wakes up again to a call from his mother asking the same thing, from his father to come over. At his parent's apartment, he sits down with his mother at the living room and Wonwoo can't stop thinking about the last time he was here. Where he and Mingyu were just dropping by with their daughter swinging from their hands between them.

 

_How many days are really in a week?_

 

Because it feels so long since Mingyu and Wonwoo last shared a smile.

 

His father takes his daughter to the kitchen, sets her on the kitchen counter next to the fridge before opening the freezer and surprising her with a rainbow popsicle. His mother presses his hand under both of hers on her lap, whispers something about talking to Mingyu as soon as he can.

 

That night, Mingyu holds onto their daughter for as long as he can while they sleep.


	3. lightwave

_ lightwave: noun _

_ light in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet ranges, which falls between x-rays and microwaves. wavelengths are between ten nanometers and one millimeter _

 

Libraries should be a place for studying. Mingyu is doing just that, with his textbooks and study guides of the light spectrum spread out like a map across two tables and he just needs to venture out for the answers. Except looking for books from random shelves is a lot funner than looking for answers for his homework.

 

He hops from one aisle to another--gliding through women's history, programming, comics, young adult all in one-go. He barely steps into the romance section when something hard hits him square in the chest and smashes his nose and it takes a lot of his focus to grab onto the person in front of him before they hit the door.

 

He grabs an arm and the bottom hem of a jacket but not the hardcovers raining dull thuds to the floor. He looks up to a main with his round, wires glasses tipped off crooked and hands clinging onto the one book he managed to save.

 

"I am so sorry," spits out low and horrified from Mingyu once the person steps off the stool and picks up the books.

 

The guy isn't that much shorter than Mingyu and he wonders why he needed a stool in the first place. Just a tiptoe up and he probably can push the book right into the right spot. "Don't worry about it."

 

"Let me treat you somewhere," Mingyu suggests, never realizing that the boy's hand is in his until he squeezes his fingers. "As an apology."

 

He pushes his glasses up at the bridge with his middle finger. "I'm working until closing, which is until nine today."

 

"Don't worry, I'll wait," Mingyu says without even thinking about his other plans for the day. "Or actually study. You know what, I'll go study while I wait for you."

 

 

The cafe early in the morning rests easy, with customers entering and leaving doors more than sitting at tables, so Mingyu listens to the boy spill about books before ink. Sunlight hits the wire of his glasses and sparks a soft light across the boy's pale skin.

 

Wonwoo is the name that hangs from his lips from that point on till the rest of his life.


	4. live

_ live: verb (used without object), lived, living. _

  1. _to have life, as an organism; be alive; be capable of vital functions_
  2. _to continue to have life; remain alive_
  3. _to continue in existence, operation, memory, etc.; last_



 

The apartment runs bare, no furniture scattered in the right rooms because the moving truck is stuck on the highway to Seoul. They walk around, shuffling in each room, and forming diagrams with their words and hands about this room and that. Paint buckets start to take residency in the rooms and newspapers flit and tape down onto the hardwood.

 

At nighttime, Mingyu spreads out blankets and pillows across the floor in what is supposed to be their bedroom. They pick this room to sleep in for the first night not because it’s where they will be sleeping for the next years of their lives. It’s because it’s the only room with soft carpet meeting their toes and with no paint buckets to worry about knocking over in their sleep. This room is fine with white walls, anyway.

 

Wonwoo plugs in a lamp at the corner of room and after washing his face and brushing his teeth, sits with his back against the wall, pulls some sheets up to his lap, and opens to a new chapter of his book. It doesn’t take long for Mingyu to find the same spot comfortable, with his head on Wonwoo’s lap and his phone in his hand and a game on the screen.

 

Wonwoo starts to run his hand through Mingyu’s hair, but instead of the sigh of content that he usually gets, Mingyu whines about getting distracted and losing his game. So Wonwoo brings his hand further and lets Mingyu’s eyelashes brush against his palm.

 

 

There’s a low rumble coming from the pit of Wonwoo’s throat and it comes up and dissipates once Mingyu moves a slight. Mingyu’s arm wakes up more sore than his sleepy eyes from Wonwoo’s head resting on his bicep, so he shrugs Wonwoo off before getting up and changing out, driving off to the supermarket to buy some ingredients for the morning.

 

“Five-star dining with dollar-store utensils,” Wonwoo mutters and Mingyu carefully slides seafood pancake from the pan and onto a paper plate.

 

“Shut up” is the nicest thing Mingyu says during breakfast.

 

“Or else I’ll spread batter on your book” is probably not so high up on the list.


	5. locative

_ locative: adjective _

_ (in certain inflected languages) noting a case whose distinctive function is to indicate place in or at which _

 

_ Wonwoo: At the library _

 

Mingyu trusts Wonwoo with his life, so when he reaches the library and discovers the front desk empty, he stares back at his phone to make sure that Wonwoo really did tell him that he will be at the library.

 

“Hey, is Wonwoo here today?” Mingyu asks.

 

Minghao purses his lips as he sets down a stack of new books, crisp laminates against fresh hardcovers out of shipment boxes. “He told me that he’d be at his literature class.”

 

_ Mingyu: Where are you _

 

 

“Do you happen to know where Wonwoo is?” he asks Wonwoo’s professor.

 

“He said he’ll be stopping by the welcome center.”

 

_ Mingyu: You’re not at the library or in class _

 

 

“Have you seen a tall guy with black hair and round glasses?” Mingyu leans into the desk and watches the girl look up from the computer screen. “He’s probably carrying a lot of books around and if you’ve ever stopped by the library across the street, you’d probably see him.”

 

The girl points a hesitant finger at the parking lot. “I remember him loading books into a car.”

 

Mingyu runs out of the office, throws out a _thank you_ over his shoulder, only to find Wonwoo’s car without the owner inside. He pulls the lanyard from his pocket, takes a second to scowl at the university's colors lining across it, and gets in the car. He shouldn’t care about the design, really, since it was free in his freshmen year and all he wanted was a lanyard he had to pay close to nothing for.

 

He drops his backpack onto the backseat and flips through the pile of books Wonwoo probably left at the passenger’s seat. A sticky note hangs out of  _ Catfish and Mandala _ .

 

_ Meet me at the cafe? _

 

 

A single slice of white cake sits at a table next to the window when Junhui gestures for a certain table the moment Mingyu steps in. Two rose petals stick out like a heart, with the help of small dots of icing. He picks up the red card under the plate,  _ Happy Anniversary _ in the familiar neat handwriting.

 

There’s a slide from across the table and Wonwoo pushes his glasses up by the bridge and smiles.


	6. love

_love: verb (used with object), loved, loving._

_to have love or affection for_

_to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person)_

 

Mingyu rocks at his heels as he waits for Wonwoo to close the library, watching the boy step in front of the automatic sliding doors a few times to make sure that they don’t open. Wonwoo’s bag dangles from Mingyu’s arm and it’s Wonwoo’s umbrella that Mingyu uses to shield them from the cold spell of rain. The eye bags under Wonwoo’s eyes would be more worrisome of Wonwoo actually admits that he doesn’t like working at the library.

 

“Are you sure you’re still fine with closing the library and going to the school at the same time?” Mingyu asks again, perhaps it’s the third time since Wonwoo punched in the security code for alarms.

 

“Yes, Mingyu, I’m fine. I love working at the library.” Mingyu side-eyes him at a red light. “Plus, I keep my notes under that one pile of books at the front desk.”

 

The rest of the ride settles into a quiet that has Mingyu contemplating. It’s Wonwoo’s last year in university and he wonders that maybe he did something wrong. But what exactly, he doesn’t know.

 

They walk to the entrance of the dorm building and Mingyu mutters a curt “goodnight, Wonwoo.”

 

His feet never turn a full 180 degrees when he hears Wonwoo’s voice, weak and gentle, “Wait, Mingyu.” Slushing steps against the rain and Wonwoo standing right in front of him, his eyes travel from Mingyu’s eyes, to the mole on his cheek, to the sniff of his nose, down to the bite of his lip, back up to his eyes. “I love you” is louder than the rain against Mingyu’s ears.

 

“I love you, too,” Mingyu says right after, leans forward and presses his lips at the corner of Wonwoo’s mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to thank dictionary.com and google for the definitions  
> i also have a soonseok version but with different letters to fill in. it's called [l_st](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11603682) :D


End file.
